If I Only Could
by A Voice in the Desert
Summary: A quick Taang two-shot for Taang week centering on the themes of Shy and Ecstacy. Aang and Toph go off to train on a warm summer day. Aang does some thinking, Toph surprises herself...
1. Shy

**So this is going to be a quick two-shot for Taang week using the prompts from Day 4 and 6. (Shy and Ecstasy) Please let me know what you think of it as this is my first attempt at a Taang fic. Hope you enjoy it!**

**The italics are thoughts...**

**Insert disclaimer here**

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****If I Only Could**

"Come on Twinkletoes," Toph called impatiently, "It's time for your earthbending lesson."

"Coming," he answered, his voice carrying over the camp.

Finally, after what seemed like a long time to Toph, the energetic airbender danced around Sokka's tent and approached his sifu.

"Hey Toph," he greeted cheerfully, "let's go."

Wordlessly, Toph turned, hiding her smile at her student's perpetually upbeat and positive outlook, and shrugged her shoulder, motioning for him to follow her into the canyon below.

Descending between the two sheer rock races, Aang could not help but be impressed by the grandeur of it. The many layers of rock, compressed over the ages, were arrayed in a rainbow of hues ranging from an almost bright red to a deep, chocolate brown. Approaching the bottom, he noticed a small, bubbling stream running through the middle and descending over the far edge of the canyon.

Despite the magnificent surroundings, Aang's mind soon wandered to the earthbender in front of him. He had known Toph for a while time now and they had grown very close over the years, but it was only recently that he had begun to have feelings other than the normal, friend-to-friend feelings he was used to having. Silently, he admired the sway of her small hips, the soft curves of her body, and her silky, raven hair that she often kept up in a bun. On occasion, when they were training, some of her hair would come loose and fall across her shoulders, and it was in moments like these that Aang realized how truly beautiful Toph was. He longed to hold her tiny hands his, if only for a brief moment.

"Yo, Twinkletoes, anyone home?" Toph called, flicking a pebble across Aang's forehead.

Mentally chastising himself for losing focus—and for calling anything about Toph tiny—Aang smiled, rubbing the spot on his arrow that Toph had hit,

"Yeah," he answered, "I'm here. So what are we doing today?"

"We?" Toph laughed, "We are not doing anything. You're going to go through all your stances and I am going to correct them when you screw them up."

Aang groaned, he hated review days, but Toph insisted they were necessary if he was going to be able to do the more advanced earthbending forms. He still struggled with the basics now and then, so he understood Toph's reasoning, but he still would have preferred to spar or train with his sifu rather than simply going through the many stances he needed to perfect.

"Ok, horse stance," Toph called.

Aang got down into his stance, feet splayed wide, weight on the balls of his feet. Toph circled him, once, twice, and then nodded her approval and motioned for him to continue.

Aang had been going through his stances for almost thirty minutes when he finally hit a snag. Toph had told him to go into the platypus bear stance, but Aang, being hot, tired, and drenched in sweat from exertion and the hot sun was not up to Toph's exacting standards.

"Twinkletoes!" she yelled, "Straighten your back, stick your chest out! I want your arms up by your shoulders, not by your waist! Come on, we've been working on this one for at least two weeks now. You should have mastered this already."

Sighing, Aang dropped his stance and took off his shirt to mop his brow.

"Toph," he began, "Can we take a break soon? I'm tired and fed up with these stances. Can't we work on some more advanced moves?"

"No!" she belted, coming within a hand span of Aang's now bare chest. "We are going to continue doing this until you get it right. Now, back into your stance; we have work to do."

Begrudgingly, Aang took his stance again, hoping to pass Toph's discerning eye. As usual he didn't.

Toph had been circling around Aang's back, feeling his position through his vibrations when she noticed something was off. Coming around to face him, she placed both her hands on her hips and did her best to glare at Aang.

"No Twinkletoes! What did I tell you? Stick your chest out!" she yelled.

As if to emphasize her point, she reached out with her hand and placed it on Aang's now bare stomach. She had meant to push his stomach back to force him to stick his chest out, but had neglected to notice that Aang was now not wearing a shirt. When her hand came into contact with his taut stomach, she stopped in shock, as if an electric current was now passing through her body. _Since when did Twinkletoes have abs?_She thought, forgetting that she was supposed to be correcting Aang, not admiring his flat stomach. Idly, she began running her hand further down his stomach, approaching Aang's beltline.

When she had gotten a little too close for comfort, Aang finally spoke up,

"Toph?" he began uncertainly, "What are you doing?"

Startled from her revere, Toph pushed Aang's stomach hard, causing him to fall backwards onto the dirt.

"Nothing!" she started defensively, "I was…just…wondering why you were so sweaty. Now go splash around in the river for a bit. I need a break."

"Ok," Aang grinned, happy to be taking a break from training. But still, he couldn't help but notice the disappointment he felt when Toph's hand had left him. It had been like they were connected for the briefest of moments; it was a feeling Aang didn't realize he wanted until he had experienced it for the first time.

Toph, meanwhile, was silently berating herself for her the slip in her previously ironclad composure. _How could I be so stupid?_ She thought. _I basically spent five minutes running my hand up and down his stomach. What does her really think of me now? Why didn't he take my hand away?_

As all these thoughts ran helter-skelter through Toph's mind, she couldn't help but acknowledge that she had actually liked feeling Aang's smooth skin. A small blush rose to her face as she tried to fight it down. She, Toph Bei Fong, did not like anyone. She was her own woman, and would not allow herself to be tied up by any emotion.

As Aang bended water over his shoulder, ridding his body of its' casing of sweat, he pondered what he had thought about earlier on the walk down. He wanted to spend more time with Toph—just him and her—not with Sokka's annoying jokes or Katara's prying eyes. He wanted to ask her on, well he wasn't sure if he could call it a date, but he figured it was closer to date than anything he had gone on before, and being in this canyon had given him an idea. _If her touch and been electrifying, think about what her lips_—he stopped the unbidden thought, mentally reprimanding himself. He couldn't let himself continue on that train of thought when he had bigger problems to worry about. Because unfortunately, he had no idea how he was going to do ask her, or if he even had the courage to approach Toph with the suggestion in the first place. But, as he watched his earthbending master pace back and forth, lost in her own thoughts, he couldn't have been more certain that he wanted to. _If I only could…_


	2. Ecstacy

**Ok so here's the conclusion of my two-shot. I no longer have any idea if today's theme is ecstasy or if that's tomorrow but regardless, I decided to post this. It ended up being a tad fluffier then I originally intended, but I'm still happy with how it turned out.**

**Please review and let me know if you like my writing. I'd really appreciate hearing from you. Hope you all had a great Taang week.**

**Again, thoughts are italicized.**

**Oh, and I still don't own ATLA...**

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**Ecstasy**

_Stupid, Stupid, Stupid_, Toph thought as she paced back and forth. _I mean sure Twinkletoes is cute—at least from what I can tell—but was that really necessary? How long was I actually doing that?_

Suddenly Toph stopped, her introspection broken by the feeling that she was being watched. Turning toward the river, she raised an eyebrow.

Aang, meanwhile, had been enjoying himself. He had easily water-bended away most of the sweat, and now he had propped himself up on a rock he had bended up from the middle of the river. He was rather proud of his invention because he knew that Toph could not feel his vibrations because of the water, and as a result, he could watch her with relative impunity. He had been admiring her viridian eyes and her high cheek bones that beautifully framed her face, when she abruptly turned and faced his direction, raising an eyebrow meaningfully.

"You know, Twinkletoes. Bending a rock platform in the middle of the river isn't exactly a new invention," she began, guessing at what he had done, "It's not like you're the first person to try it."

"Well," Aang began, nervously scratching the back of his neck, "I was just relaxing in the sun. You know, to dry off?"

Toph snorted, "Couldn't you have just waterbended yourself dry?"

"Ummm, yeah, but I like feeling the warmth from the sun better." Aang frowned, he knew it wasn't much of an excuse, but it was worth a shot.

Toph just stood there with her patented "how stupid do you think I am?" look on her face.

Seeing that Toph was not buying a word of his excuse, Aang, in a moment of rashness, opted for something drastic in an attempt to derail her interrogation. He reached his hands back, quietly drew a sphere of water from the river, and threw it at Toph. The water ball exploded unexpectedly over the earthbender's head, drenching her from head to foot in cold river water.

"Twinkletoes…" the noise game from the back of Toph's throat like the guttural growl of an angry moose-lion.

Without warning, another globule of water exploded over Toph's head, and she heard an ill-concealed giggle coming from the direction of the river.

"Oh," she laughed maniacally, "you are so dead."

And with that, Toph began bending puddles of the now muddy earth in the general direction of Aang's voice; who, being the smart airbender that he was, was repeatedly ducking under the water, trying to hide his position from her, and all the while bending more water in her direction.

Finally, Toph lost patience with the Aang's constant ducking and diving, and simply decided to draw him out with a show of pure force. Creating an earth tent to shield herself from Aang's water barrage, she began tearing up large chunks of the river bed and dumping them onto the shore.

When Aang saw Toph go into her earth tent, he knew he was in trouble. He, of all people, had managed to goad the most powerful earthbender in the world into playing a relatively dangerous game of cat and mouse.

Then, he saw a large platform of rocks and mud from the riverbed, slightly upstream of his position, begin to rise up and dump itself into a pile on the bank. He contemplated moving farther down the river, but the more he moved, the closer he got to the edge where the river dropped off into a short series of waterfalls.

Aang jumped as the rocks next to him began to shift, and he knew that he would have to run soon. Waiting until Toph began to let the rocks fall; he jumped out of the river and onto a sphere of air, riding it like a scooter in an attempt to flee from his angry sifu.

Toph smiled in her earth tent when she felt Aang jump onto his air scooter; she knew she had won once the crazy airhead had fled from the safety of the river. Bending a wall in front of Aang's path, she forced him to swerve to the left. Again, she bent another rock wall in front of him, forcing him closer and closer to her position.

Aang knew he was done when Toph started bending large walls of earth in front of his scooter. There was simply no way he could race fast enough to outpace her bending. He could try to hop off and earthbend a path out, but he knew Toph would be too fast for him.

Feigning a move further to the left, Aang did the last thing Toph expected—he charged straight at her. He closed the distance, thirty feet, twenty, then ten, an unwavering grin plastered on his face as he charged through the mud. Unfortunately for him, Toph was quicker. At the last second, moving her foot slightly to the left, she shot a pillar of rock directly up under Aang's air scooter. His momentum propelled him forward like a cannon ball, up and over Toph's head, until he landed, skidding through the mud until he came to a stop behind her.

Before he could even stand up to defend himself, Toph was there. She encased his feet in shackles of stone, and manacled his hands to the ground above his head. Lying there helplessly, covered in mud, with an irate Toph, also caked in mud, grinning maniacally as she stood over him; Aang began to laugh.

He simply couldn't help himself, the situation was too funny, the avatar and his earthbending master, getting into a mud fight that ended with him lying helplessly on his back.

Toph, meanwhile, had cocked her head when she heard Aang laughing. At first, she wasn't sure if she should be insulted by his laughter or just angry. Eventually neither emotion won out, she had to admit the whole thing was pretty funny; but she still kicked some mud onto Aang's face just to shut him up—and to make her feel slightly better.

Sitting down, directly on Aang's stomach, she patted his abs. _Might as well do it while I've got the chance_, she rationalized, failing to notice the rapid increase of Aang's heart rate. Smiling down at her captured student, Toph bent some of the mud off his face,

"Thought you had me there for a second, didn't you Twinkletoes?" she taunted.

Aang shrugged, "You never know. It almost worked."

Toph snorted, "Not a prayer Baldy. I had you when you stopped being a wimp and came out of the river. You knew that was the only way you could hide from me."

"Well it worked. You didn't notice me watching you for a while ther—" Aang stopped abruptly, seeing Toph's face cloud in anger, realizing what he had just admitted to.

"You were doing what!?" she asked.

"Just watching…you," he managed.

When Toph turned, placing her hands on either side of his head so she could better glare down at the offending airbender, Aang knew he should have been terrified—he had just ticked off the most powerful earthbender in the world, and he was in no position to defend himself. However, Aang's mind was far from the terrified state it should have been in. In fact, he couldn't help but admire her porcelain smooth skin as her long raven hair, which had come undone during the brief fight, dangled down over her shoulders, almost brushing his face. Her light green eyes seemed to sparkle, her cheeks were dusted with a light cherry hue from her exertions, and her lips—her lips looked so soft, so infinitely kissable.

"Aang," she began, still fuming, "I can't bel—mmph."

She was cut off rather abruptly, as Aang stretched forward and kissed her full on the lips. At first it seemed like a light caress, but gradually it deepened as when she responded to his advance. Their mouths intertwined, for once not caring about their surroundings or if anyone was watching. Finally, they reluctantly broke for air, reveling in the moment. Toph simply collapsed onto Aang's chest.

_Wow_, was all she could think.

Aang, who, originally had been afraid that Toph would be even more furious after he kissed her, relaxed when she simply laid her head on his chest. He did, however, note that the feel of her lips was, as he had presumed earlier, exponentially better than her touch. They lay there for a while, enjoying each other's company.

"Toph…" he began.

"Hmmm?" she asked.

"Do you…Would you want to come back down here tonight? Like just you and me? No Katara or Sokka. I could look at the stars and you could just listen to river—you know—so we could be together? I mean, if you don't want to we cou—"

This time it was Toph covered his mouth with hers, but only a quick brush, teasing him with her gentle caress.

"I'd love to," she smiled.

Pushing herself up off Aang, she began to head back up canyon. Aang smiled as she walked off, admiring her slim figure. When she had gotten a good way off, panic started to rise up in him.

"Toph!" he called.

"Yes," she turned, smiling innocently.

"Could you please let me out?" he pleaded.

"Why would I do that?" she asked, still smiling pleasantly. "After all, wasn't it you who took advantage of me in this secluded canyon?"

"Toph…" Aang groaned.

"I'm sure you'll think of something," she consoled. "Besides, it'll be dusk in five or six hours, and if you haven't figured a way out by then, I'll be back here anyway."

Aang sighed; he knew there was no reasoning with her at this stage. Surprisingly, however, he wasn't too worried about his predicament. He would figure a way out soon, and if worst came to worst, Toph would be back eventually.

Content, he leaned his head back against the earth and thought back to what had just happened. That brief moment, where Toph's and his lips met, that emotion that had so eluded him earlier now came to him in a flash. He smiled as he thought of it, _Ecstasy. Pure, unbridled, untamed ecstasy_.


End file.
